The Therapist Who Taught Me How to Have a Healthy Relationship

She opened my eyes to a simple technique that YOU can use to make your own relationship better, too. It works!

This piece was inspired by the passing on December 30, 2021 of Lois Bass, a therapist in Amherst, Massachusetts. Lois was a remarkable woman, not merely a good clinician. I didn’t know her as a friend or colleague, although I knew people she knew. And for a brief time in 1993, she was my couples’ therapist. Her death reminded me of a time long ago that I can now write about without judging myself or worrying about being judged.

Needing Help

It wasn’t a healthy relationship to begin with. “X” and I were all wrong for each other from Day One.

I often joked about the mismatch: She is too young, I’d tell people — 13 years my junior —and too tall (six feet to my 5'3"). We were from completely different backgrounds and worlds. She was also — honestly, I knew this from the get-go — too dramatic and too depressed.

But there I was. I even left my beloved Manhattan to be with her.

I should have run the other away when she told me she’d “gone through” 21 sponsors in her 20 years in AA and had tried committing suicide twice… when those who knew her well warned that she was “troubled”… when I, then a newcomer to the 12-step world, was advised not to start a new relationship with anyone.

Eyes wide-open, I ignored all advice and my own best judgment. Call me crazy. I stayed for five and a half years.

I didn’t leave when she promised for weeks to cook a special dinner for our friends and at the last minute took to her bed (again) because she “just couldn’t.”

I didn’t leave when she got in the passenger seat of my car, enraged about who-knows-what (that time), and banged her fist on the dashboard. The force left a dent, a haunting reminder of her capacity for rage.

I didn’t leave when she became obsessed with her own therapist, or when she invited her even-more-troubled baby brother to live with us.

Oh, and did I mention that I was paying for almost everything?

I didn’t leave when, in a moment of anger, X shoved me. It didn’t hurt. I didn’t fall. But it was an act of aggression nonetheless. I felt her rage. It scared me. She said it was my fault; I’d goaded her. An alarm went off in my head. This is what an abused woman must feel like.

I also didn’t leave when she cheated on me. At least, not at first. Instead, I agreed to go to couple’s therapy.

Meeting a New Therapist

Lois Bass didn’t impress me at first sight. Her office looked like the typical therapist’s venue —a couch for us, a chair for her, a box of tissues on the table, and lots of green plants.

Lois set ground rules early on: If therapy was to work, X had to give up the girlfriend. Duh, I thought to myself, that’s a given.

She also explained that we’d each have to work on “our part.” Seeing myself as the “injured” party, I didn’t quite know what that meant. But I was willing to find out. I was about to turn 50, divorced and out of two unhealthy rebound relationships. I wanted this relationship to work.

I decided that Lois, who came highly recommended, was a good-enough therapist.

My first impression changed when X was incensed by something Lois said and decided to hurl that box of tissues in her direction. Frightened and embarrassed by X’s behavior, I was relieved to see Lois’s quiet strength and psychological savvy emerge.

“You can’t do that in here,” she calmly said to X, reminding me of a mother telling a toddler to use her inside voice. To my surprise, X obeyed and “behaved” herself thereafter.

Week followed painful week. At home, in between sessions, we argued about everything and nothing. Things seemed to be getting worse. Still, I stayed. I held out hope.

Of course I did; that was my role (in this and in other relationships).

The Experiment

I can’t remember many of the details or the content during X’s and my long-ago therapy sessions — except that we saw Lois for about five months.

I do remember the surprisingly simple exercise Lois prescribed for me when I worried at one point that “X was over-extending herself.”

With my encouragement, X had gone back to school for an advanced degree. Now that it was time for her to pick her classes for the next several months, I was concerned.

X claimed I was “always” trying to “control” her. She believed I lacked confidence in her ability to run her own life.

Wrong, I said to myself.

“I’m just trying to help,” I said out loud in my defense. “I only want what’s best for you.”

Lois stopped me. Had she not, I might have continued to lecture X: You know how you are. You bite off more than you can chew, and then it stresses you out. You are regretful at first, and then you get angry…..

“Melinda, hold on…” Lois said. It was almost as if she could hear the voice in my head. “Would you be willing to try an experiment this week.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Whenever you’re about to say something to X, don’t say it out loud. Just think it. Keep in mind what you would have said, but be silent. Don’t say anything. Do you think you can do that for a week?”

No problem. I trusted Lois at this point and was eager to try anything that might put an end to the never-ending, same-old-same-old arguments at home.

So What Did I Discover?

The next session, Lois immediately asked what I’d learned from observing what I wanted to say but didn’t.

I led with this: “Well, now that I’m quiet, no one is saying anything.”

Lois: “Or do you mean that X is not saying what you’d like her to say? Or what you expect her to say?”

Me (a little sheepishly): “Maybe.”

Lois: “You have to remember what you put into a relationship is what YOU put into it. You can’t expect X to put in what you put in.”

Gradually, I understood where Lois was leading me and when I finally got there, I said:

“Almost everything I say to X is to shape her, change her, or make her do something the way I want it done. The way I would do it.

“Obviously,” I admitted, “I think my way is better, smarter, more efficient — whatever. I can understand how being on the other side of that would make anyone feel bad.”

I was the one therapists identify as “the caretaker,” “the pursuer” or, to use 12-step parlance, “the alanonic.”

The alcoholic chases the bottle, the alanonic chases the alcoholic, even when no alcohol is involved.

In fact, you can substitute food, rage, sex, gambling, or any number of other dysfunctional “fixes” in that equation. Both parties are “sick” — one because she can’t stop using, the other because she can’t stop trying to fix or reform the user.

I knew all this in theory; I had written several articles in the early 90s about codependency. But I never quite saw myself in until Lois held up a mirror.

The point of her experiment was to raise my awareness, which it did…forever after.

My new-found awareness didn’t save the relationship. I would soon find out that X never actually ended her affair; she’d been lying to me for months. Finally, I left.

The 4- Point Takeaway: Then and Now

I’m thankful that the relationship with X got me into couples therapy. X was my “bottom” — the relationship that brought me to my knees and forced me to look at my choices and, most important, at my own behavior.

I’m even more thankful that the therapist was Lois, who armed me with a key skill that betters any relationship: Listen to yourself before you speak. Understand your own agenda before you tweak or, worse, accuse.

It works. To wit, my current (and very healthy) partnership is going on 28 years!

I also channeled Lois while writing Family Whispering. In that book, I offered readers this sure-fire formula for protecting — and bettering — any relationship:

Before you do or say anything in response to the other person, ask yourself, “Is what I’m about to say or do going to make this relationship better?”

If the answer is “no,” below are four things you can do instead.

This not only applies to your partner, children and other family members, it works with a best friend, a boss or coworker, or the checker at your local grocery store:

1. Dig deeper.

Listen to what you’re about to say. Ask yourself why you want to respond in that way.

• Is it to change the person?
• Is it to alleviate your own anxiety?
• Is it because this person and/or this situation reminds you of something unpleasant or painful in your past?
• Is it because there’s unfinished business between you, and now you want avenge or punish?

2. Rephrase what you’re about to say.

Listen to the words in your own head. Imagine what they might sound like to the other person. Instead of pointing a finger or making a claim about them, lead with why the issue or this particular discussion is hard for you. In other words, start with how you are feeling. Share your experience.

Taking into account your own motives (see #1), find a kinder, more respectful, and more authentic way to make a statement or a request. If you can’t…

3. Table the discussion.

I’m not suggesting that you submerge or suppress whatever emotions you’re feelings. You have a right to them. Just make sure you put them where they belong: with you.

Give yourself a time-out to chill out, think things through, or call a trusted friend. You’ll come back refreshed and, hopefully, with a different perspective. And if you don’t….

4. Ask yourself is this relationship worth working for?

As I found out thirty years ago (and a few times before that!), some relationships have a shelf life. Some are lost from the beginning. Some die of neglect. Some go on but with little benefit to the two people in it.

A wise therapist can help you understand your relationship but not necessarily change it for the better. Sometimes, the best thing that can happen is that you learn from your mistakes, and move on.

Here’s another piece on relationships that you might have missed:

If you like what you’ve read, by all means:

• Subscribe to my Medium articles — you’ll get an email when I publish.
• Become a member of Medium using this link, and I will earn half of your membership fee: $5/month, or $50/year — a small price to pay to support a favorite writer and for unlimited access to a world of great thinking and writing.
• Follow me on social media via LinkTree.